“They came out with a tub of ice cream and made off. She tried to confront them.”

In a post on his blog about the Southside-Newington ward he represents, Cllr Rose urged anyone with information about the theft to contact police.

A spokeswoman for the Festival Theatre, which is run by the same team behind the King’s Theatre, confirmed that police had been notified about the incident, but declined to comment further about the circumstances.

The popular Edinburgh Festival Theatre is hosting a 12-day run of the stage adaptation of Mark Haddon’s bestselling novel Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time and the evening performance would have concluded shortly after the incident.

A daring confectionery theft on a much larger scale hit the headlines last year when £65,000 worth of chocolates and fudge was stolen from an address in Harrogate, North Yorkshire.

And just last month, police revealed that they were hunting a man believed to have stolen £400 worth of chocolate from a petrol station in Coventry.